Many lawsuits likely to follow Asiana Airlines accident; Do background checks on ammunition sales work?; How US casino owners made Macau into the world's gambling Mecca; CA prisoners resume hunger strike to protest treatment; How the brain creates the 'buzz' needed to spread ideas; Picture This: Photographer David Guttenfelder and the plight of the songbird; Jay-Z's album release sparks privacy concerns, and much more.
Many lawsuits likely to follow Asiana Airlines accident
An update on the Asiana Airlines plane that clipped a seawall and crash landed at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday, killing two 16-year-olds and injuring at least 50 others.
American and South Korean investigators today are questioning two of the four pilots of the plane. The other two pilots were questioned yesterday. Investigators want to know why the Boeing 777's speed was too slow to land safely, and why no one realized it in time. And they'll also be talking with air controllers.
Focus now is also turning to the lawsuits that will likely come in the wake of this crash.
Steven Marks is an aviation trial lawyer representing victims of air disasters. He's been involved in virtually every major air disaster in the last 25 years.
Do background checks on ammunition sales work?
Tighter gun control is a top priority for Democrats in the state Senate this year. One of the bills would require bullet buyers go through background checks first. It's a plan that's already in place in parts of California.
From the California Report, Scott Detrow has the story.
Jay-Z's album release sparks privacy concerns
On the 4th of July, Jay-Z released his new album, "Magna Carta... Holy Grail" in a unique way. Samsung bought 1,000,000 copies of the album at $5 apiece and allowed phone users to stream or download an app containing the album at midnight on the 4th.
Jay-Z and Samsung's app gave users free access to the album, but it also requested access to user's social media accounts, GPS systems and more. It could reign in a new era in album releasing and music marketing, but might also signify a more corporate trend to a form of art.
Chris Richards of the Washington Post wrote about "Magna Carta...Holy Grail"'s release and Jay-Z's musical performance, and joins the show today.
New game allows users to take control of online ads
If you do anything online, chances are your personal info is being mined somehow - maybe by advertisers, maybe by the NSA.
But what do you do if you want to keep your information private? One idea is simply not to be yourself.
Rachel Law is a recent graduate of Parsons Design School in New York, and she has created a game titled "Vortex" for her final grad school project. The game allows the user to find cookies, packets of data a computer uses to track one's online habits, and trade them in for others in order to create a new identity. For example, one could create the persona of a 35-year-old housewife, and be more likely to find baking advertisements pop up than a 20-year-old single male.
Law says "players" can use Vortex to customize the ads they're shown, and she joins the show today to talk about her game.
How the brain creates the 'buzz' needed to spread ideas
When you post a story to your Facebook page, or forward a funny meme, what's going through your head? Researchers at UCLA have been searching for the answer to that elusive question of why people share ideas or why things get "buzz."
Matthew Lieberman, professor of psychology and of psychiatry at UCLA and author of the upcoming book "Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect," joins the show to explain.
Why CD sales are still booming in Japan
You know what's big in Japan right now? CDs of all things. Jim Ellis, assistant managing editor at Bloomberg Business Week, is here to tell us why.
Tuesday Reviewsday: The Editors, Mayer Hawthorne, Janelle Monáe
Now it's time for Tuesday Reviewsday, our weekly new music segment. This week we're joined by music supervisor Morgan Rhodes.
Artist: The Editors
Album: "The Weight of Your Love"
Song: "The Phone Book"
Artist: Mayer Hawthorne
Album: "Where Does This Door Go"
Release: July 16
Song: "The Stars Are Ours"
Artist: Janelle Monáe
Album: "Electric Lady"
Song: "Dance Apocalyptic"
Release: September 10
CA prisoners resume hunger strike to protest treatment
Thirty-thousand inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison in northern California have been refusing their meals since yesterday morning. The inmates are on a hunger strike to protest the use of isolation as a way to break the power of prison gangs.
They claim that prisoners are kept locked in cells without any access to other inmates, school or work programs, sometimes for decades.
KPCC's Julie Small has been following the story and she joins the show to tell us more.
Riverside rallies to save original California orange trees
More than two years into a quarantine on citrus trees in much of Southern California, the Asian citrus psyllid continues to spread. This spring researchers discovered the tiny insects on the 140-year-old Eliza Tibbets tree in Riverside, known as the parent of navel orange trees the world over.
From the California Report, Rowan Moore Gerety has the story.
To control the insects’ spread, researchers already have introduced a parasitic wasp that preys on the psyllids and their larvae. Southern California growers also are using a rotating regimen of pesticides to protect the state’s $2 billion citrus crop. But protecting the Eliza Tibbets tree will require special measures, and friends of the tree are raising money to build a specialized mesh enclosure around the canopy.
Riverside citrus historian Vince Moses says the seedless navel oranges we know so well today are “a mutant of a Brazilian variety called the Selecta.” Eliza Tibbets, one of Riverside’s founders, introduced two of the Selecta's mutant offspring to California in the 1870s. Beside her house in Riverside, the trees yielded America's first seedless fruit: large, brightly colored and easy to peel.
One tree died in 1921, and the lone survivor now stands nearby at an ordinary intersection ringed with small apartment buildings and a strip mall. But in the late 19th century, the area was transformed by Tibbets’ introduction. “There were thousands of acres of navel orange groves, with streetcar lines, with irrigation canals,” Moses says.
Tibbets' neighbors used cuttings from her two original trees to establish the first navel orange orchards in California. Over the years, mutations of their offspring provided new varieties to farmers from South Africa to Pakistan. California became a global hub for citrus, and by the turn of the 20th century, Riverside was the wealthiest city per capita in all the United States.
But today the tree that made it all possible is at risk of contracting citrus greening disease, caused by a bacterium called huang long bing. In Chinese, Moses says, huang long bing translates roughly as “the yellow shit disease. If the psyllid bites this parent tree, and injects huang long bing, they’re gone. There’s no known cure.”
Citrus greening curls the leaves of new growth on orange trees and causes the fruit to have a bitter metallic taste. The psyllids in California aren’t yet infected with huang long bing, and growers here have not experienced any losses. But the disease already has spread throughout all 32 citrus-growing counties in Florida and much of Texas.
Tracy Kahn, a botanist who curates UC Riverside’s Citrus Variety Collection, explains that most infected trees die within a few years. “They're losing trees in Florida left and right,” she says, “and it's really hard to keep an industry going because trees have a very short life.” The Citrus Variety Collection is the largest in the world, with more than 1,000 kinds of fruit, many of them descendants of the Tibbets tree. To guard against citrus greening, clones of every variety in the collection are now being kept in a nearby greenhouse, too, as a botanical backup.
Giorgios Vidalakis, a citrus virologist with the university’s Citrus Clonal Protection Program (CCCP), says it’s only a matter of time before citrus greening spreads to orchards in California.
“We know it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when,” he explains. Inside a large greenhouse at the CCCP’s quarantine site in Riverside, researchers use cuttings to propagate new varieties for California citrus growers in a pathogen-free environment.
Vidalakis says that citrus greening is an example of a pathogen getting around the quarantine system. “We believe that a single tree, brought into Miami, Fla. — right now, that one tree is destroying the $10 billion Florida citrus industry," he says.
To protect the Tibbets tree, Vidalakis says, “We have created a buffer zone, removing citrus relatives and ornamental plants. For huang long bing, we don't have the solution yet. The best solution now, to buy us time until science finds a more permanent solution, is to build a protective structure” around the tree. Such a structure would keep infected psyllids from feeding on the tree's sap and could cost as much as $50,000. The city has pledged to cover part of the cost, but additional donations are welcome.
“Right now, it really keeps me up at night,” Vidalakis says. “We don't want to be the generation that loses that tree. But if the mesh plan works, Vidalakis thinks they can keep the tree alive indefinitely: “I don’t see any reason we can’t go on forever.”
Guantanamo prison asked to stop force feedings during Ramadan fast
Ramadan started this week for Muslims around the world, but what is a solemn time of fasting and reflection has become a flashpoint at the Guantanamo federal prison. There, some inmates on hunger strike are seeking court orders to stop the U.S. government from force-feeding them.
The inmates' cause has been taken up by rapper Mos Def, who now goes by Yasiin Bey. Yesterday, he released a video of him undergoing a forced feeding that has since gone viral.
With more on the Guantanamo forcefeeding controversy during Ramadan is Carol Rosenberg, who reports on Guantanamo for the Miami Herald.
How US casino owners made Macau into the world's gambling Mecca
Think gambling capital of the world, and Las Vegas comes to mind, right? If so, you're off by thousands of miles. The tiny Chinese territory of Macau manages more wagers than all U.S. casinos combined.
The former Portuguese colony has figured into James Bond films over the years, like "The Man with the Golden Gun," but it's meteoric rise has been over just the last decade. It's also the only place in China where casino gambling is legal.
"The kind of gamblers that come to Macau are the type of gamblers casinos want," said Hannah Dreier, who covers gambling for the Associated Press. "Macau doesn't have the backdrop of shows and restaurants and other diversions that Las Vegas does. The people that come, come to gamble and be high rollers."
Macau has always been a hub for gambling, but only in the past decade has it become legitimized and transformed into a global destination. As a colonial outpost, gambling halls more resembled dens, with shootings in the open street and public prostitution and money laundering being commonplace. But in 1999, China took the island back over, eliminating a 40-year-old monopoly.
Combine that with a plethora of other factors, and a district just over 10 square miles turned into an international gambling hub.
"While Las Vegas stumbled during the great recession, Macau was fine," said Dreier. "It's a plane ride away from half of the world's population. It's right in the middle of a culture where notions of luck and chance are very important. There's no religious taboo on gambling, and China is in the middle of this explosive growth. There's a lot of people with money there who haven't had money before and are looking for a middle-class diversion."
Las Vegas casinos took notice as well. Las Vegas Sands was the first to enter market, and Wynn Resorts and MGM are among the American-based companies with casino resorts in Macau. According to Dreier, Las Vegas would need to attract six times as many people as it does to equal Macau's gambling industry, and U.S. companies make most of their profits in the tiny Chinese municipality.
While the Chinese government has partially regulated the industry, there are still legal issues involved in Macau's rise as a gambling capital.
"The taint is triads, which are organized criminal groups that have been around for 100 years," Dreier said. "China also has currency controls- [you're] not allowed to bring $50,000 off the mainland in any given year. And that's a pittance at these casinos."
Many a gangster movie in Las Vegas involves a scene of a poor man or women being beat up and abused after not being able to pony up after losing at the casino tables. In mainland China, there's no way to enforce debts. So rather than have the casinos directly involved, organizations called junkets emerge, whose role is to loan gamblers money and collect debts if needed.
"Casinos don't have to risk anything by lending money, and don't have to get involved in the murky territory of collecting debts in a country that doesn't let you do that legally," said Dreier.
American companies have also run into trouble in Macau. Las Vegas Sands has had allegations of working with gang members and extortion, while MGM lost its casino license in New Jersey and is currently petitioning to get it back.
Still, the money continues to flow in Macau, even as companies live in constant fear that the Chinese government might cut off the money flow at any given moment. Las Vegas is even seeing its own casinos change to accommodate high-rollers from overseas.
"Macau is absolutely reshaping the Las Vegas Strip. There are casinos down in Vegas that have red carpeting, Asian decorations, and it feels like there are high-end Chinese restaurants opening every month," said Dreier. "Asian pop stars are getting residences in some of these casinos and most importantly, the casinos are opening up these high-roller baccarat tables. Those tables now account for a majority of revenues in these casinos."
So while slots and blackjack tables make up the imagery behind Las Vegas, the large bank accounts and high stakes of international baccarat players are fueling revenues on the Strip as Macau high-rollers travel to the desert.
New campaign hopes to help permanent residents become citizens
There are 8.5 million people with green cards in the U.S. These legal permanent residents are just one step away from becoming American citizens, and yet only one out of 10 actually follow through on that process.
But a national effort called the New Americans Campaign is underway to get people to take that next step.
Joining us is an organizer behind the local effort, Elisa Sequiers, the state director of civic engagement at NALEO Educational Fund.
A coded message in UCLA's campus floor tiles
The first Internet message ever sent was just two letters: LO. The intended message for UCLA computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock and his team was "LOGIN", but the system crashed before the message completed. Instead, the slogan emerged as "Lo and Behold!"
In 2011, an architect in the same building where the message was completed left behind a secret message. In binary code, the same format in which the first message was sent 44 years ago, the tiles of a floor in the engineering building spell "Lo and Behold."
To talk more about this nugget of a floor plan in his building, Professor Kleinrock joins the show today.
Picture This: Photographer David Guttenfelder and the plight of the songbird
David Guttenfelder is best-known for his war photography from places like Rwanda, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. While on special assignment for National Geographic, he took on a more delicate topic: migrating songbirds.
What he soon discovered is that the widespread slaughter of songbirds for food and amusement conjures up the same emotions as covering war-torn territories. Across the Mediterranean, millions of these winged creatures are being slaughtered for food, for profit, and for sport.
Guttenfelder joins the show to talk about his latest project.
Interview Highlights:
On how came to focus on birds as a subject:
"To be honest, I wasn't a bird watcher. I've become one now. It's not my background. I've spent most of my career covering human conflict. I came to this story through National Geographic for the opportunity to do something a little bit different and experience a completely different kind of conflict."
On the conflict in the world of birds:
"We were focusing specifically on what's going on around the Mediterranean. There are roughly 5 billion birds that migrate across twice a year. The situation is shocking to me. There were close to a billion birds that are killed during this passage. Guns, nets, traps, snares and these really horrifying sticky lime sticks that are put in trees and trap birds when they land on their way across the sea."
On the birds being targeted and why:
"It's the broadest number of species you can imagine, from the tiniest songbirds, warblers, to raptors, to highly threatened endangered waders. People kill them primarily for food. It's a tradition in much of the Mediterranean. People kill them for sport, people kill them because it's very, very profitable. Even the tiniest of songbirds in Europe are sold as delicacies for a very high price, as much as $10 for one bird on a plate."
On what he felt when he took photos of trapped birds:
"My first experience in seeing many of these species for the first time in real life was to see them hanging and struggling and desperately trying to release themselves from this glue. Breaking their wings, ripping off their flight feathers, it's a really shocking thing to see. I was working with environmental activists who were trying to do a number of things, and the most immediate thing they were doing was pulling them down and releasing them."
On activists putting birds in their mouth to wash sap off:
"When they pull the birds down, if the birds have not already injured themselves, or haven't been hanging too long and can be set free, they have to first be cleaned. It turns out the best way to do that is to actually put the bird in your mouth. The tree sap is sweet and dissolves on your tongue, so the activists would put the feet of the birds into their mouth and suck on them. I did this too, a couple of times while I was photographing them, mainly, but I did it as well when there were just too many birds and [the activists] needed help. It's a life-affirming thing to do, to help a bird in that way."
On the irony of getting these beautiful shots while the birds are trapped:
"That's true. I'm looking at these birds and I'm studying them very closely. I can see all the colors, I can touch them, it's an unusual look at a bird. But then you stop and remind yourself that birds aren't supposed to be like this. The reason that we love birds is that they're free and the glimpses that we have of them are fleeting."
Oh his colleagues' reaction to this bird photographing project:
"I've developed a certain identity as 'that guy,' so my friends, who were all in Syria the year I was in Albania and Egypt photographing songbirds, were saying, 'Hey, what's going on? You're a bird photographer now.' Some of my hardened war photographers gave me a hard time, but my answer to them was that I had discovered that this was a war of its own kind."
On how his experience with human conflict helped him photograph the birds:
"I was asked to do this because of my background. I went to places where I had to befriend men with weapons in the middle of the desert. In Cyprus, the activists who were out there trying to dismantle the limesticks and the mist nets and confronting the poachers, some of them were attacked. Some were grievously injured. I have to say, over many years of working and covering war, covering people doing terrible things to one another, I think you develop a thick skin. You can become a bit cynical, and surprisingly, me going out in the field, taking a look at little birds, I think it made me take my thick skin off for a moment."